The following is just a proof-of-concept screenshot to get me started:

I've been thinking about making this for quite some time. If I were to make it, I've written down some rough idea of what I'd like it to be.

-8 character party-10 races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Gnoll, Gnome, Kobold, Ogre, Orc, Sprite-12 classes: Fighter, Wizard, Priest, Thief, Bard, Lord, Monk, Necromancer, Ninja, Paladin, Peasant, Ranger-aging would be a factor-the weaker class/race characters will tend to advance in levels quicker than those stronger class/race characters. So an Ogre Peasant will level up a lot faster than an Elf Lord.-there won't be any race restrictions for classes, as long as the requirements are met, you can create any character you like. You can have a Gnoll Wizard if you like-the adventure will take place in a 10 level dungeon that will be designed by hand (instead of being procedurally generated like in RoQ 2 and 3) with various puzzles and pitfalls. There will even be NPCs that you will encounter along the way.-3 rows of monsters during combat-60 magic and priest spells

The system requirements will be 16KB RAM Expansion + Disk Drive. I will try to use up as much of the 170KB disk that the game takes place in. The game will be modular and load those things that are needed from disk into RAM instead of putting everything all at once into 32KB.

Today, I'm organizing my notes and ideas so that I can get started. Hopefully I can sustain my interest in this project.

Last edited by Ghislain on Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:34 am, edited 4 times in total.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound

KingTrode wrote:I've been meaning to have a real indepth play of ROQ III for quite a while but not got around to it, I'd best get my skates on then.

Great to hear your planning a 4th installment, and look forward to seeing it develop - really enjoyed reading the big thread on here about ROQ III.

KingTrode / Jim

Thanks. Today, I designed the wireframe graphics for the dungeon. While RoQ3 had graphics that looked like late 1980s C64 graphics, I'm making this one will look like a late 1970s/early 1980s mainframe vintage CRPG game. This is a deliberate design choice because it is simpler, and I will mostly focus on the game system which will be more elaborate than the previous.

The monster graphics will also look like they come from classic 1970s RPG images:

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound

Ghislain wrote:Thanks. Today, I designed the wireframe graphics for the dungeon. While RoQ3 had graphics that looked like late 1980s C64 graphics, I'm making this one will look like a late 1970s/early 1980s mainframe vintage CRPG game. This is a deliberate design choice because it is simpler, and I will mostly focus on the game system which will be more elaborate than the previous.

The monster graphics will also look like they come from classic 1970s RPG

Those monochrome graphics still look nice and if they afford more resources/performance etc. to the game itself then that's a nice bonus.

On the 3D perspective dungeon type view, it's something I've wanted to try but not quite sure how to go about it - perhaps you might have some link/info that might enlighten me somewhat?

KingTrode wrote:On the 3D perspective dungeon type view, it's something I've wanted to try but not quite sure how to go about it - perhaps you might have some link/info that might enlighten me somewhat?

As for 3D dungeon perspective that was one in RQ3, I pretty much just wing it without looking for online code samples. Since everything is a fixed perspective, I just design the custom chars that are needed.

akator wrote:Your work is incredible. I'm excited to see another, although I haven't gotten very far enough in your previous games to need a new game

I myself haven't solved many RPG computer games -- it was always the journey of creating a party, exploring and leveling up and finding more powerful items. It's no wonder that Telengard is my favorite CRPG, but I've been playing Oubliette a lot on the iPad (and RQ4 will be influenced by it), which focuses more on character and party with no actual quest. That being said, RQ4 will have the most story compared to the previous 3 -- but even when it's solved, the player can still go dungeon crawling for monsters to kill and to find treasure.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound

While RQ3 was programmed in pure assembly language, I'll most likely program RQ4 in part BASIC and part ML.

The rationale for this is that it will speed up development, especially for an RPG where tables and data are referenced quite a bit. DEF FN is quite powerful, and I intend to use it quite often. If I find it too cumbersome to write the game this way, I'll switch to pure ML of course.

The main reason why RQ3 was being programmed in ML at the time is because I originally wanted to make a cartridge game at first.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound

I worked on this quite a bit today. When you roll a character, you're presented a list of classes that he or she qualifies for. As long as the character meets the minimum stat requirements, they will be able to select that class.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound